One Bread, One Body

by the Bishops of England and Ireland on the Eucharist.

...Christian faith is centred on the person of God's living Word, made flesh and present among us. 'Through all the words of Sacred Scripture, God speaks only one single Word, his one Utterance in whom he expresses himself completely.' As Christians we find our nourishment and strength in the Scriptures precisely because God speaks to us now through them. Word and Sacrament are a seamless robe. Scripture and Eucharist are intimately interwoven in the life of the Church: '... the Church has always venerated the Scriptures as she venerates the Lord's Body.

She never ceases to present to the faithful the bread of life, taken from the one table of God's Word and Christ's Body.' This nourishing with God's Word takes place in a special way at Mass. The Eucharist is where the Scriptures are most at home and where they speak most powerfully to us. In the early Church, it was those books which were read at the Eucharist which became accepted as the 'Canon' of Scripture. Today those same Scriptures keep us in living communion with the witness of the Apostles. It is in hearing God's Word that the Church is built up and grows. The Catholic Church finds the roots of its teaching on the Eucharist in the Scriptures, always read within the living Tradition of the whole Church.

The meaning of the Eucharist is rooted in the faith of the people of the Old Testament, especially in the doctrine of 'covenant'. The covenant was a treaty or alliance between two parties, used in the Scriptures of the special relationship which God established with his people, Israel. There were close links in Jewish thought between 'covenant', 'sacrifice' and 'communion meal'. In the Book of Exodus (24.1-11), God's new relationship (covenant) with his chosen people is sealed with the pouring of blood (sacrifice) and the eating together of some of the sacrificial food (communion). Moses said of the blood, 'Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you'. The blood was sprinkled upon both the altar (symbolising God) and the people, a powerful expression of the unity of life which God establishes between himself and Israel. By eating the sacrificial food together, the people were made one as they shared the blessings of God. The fundamental Covenant which spans the Old Testament and the New Testament remains the same: 'I will be their God and they shall be my People.' Unity with God and unity with each other belong together. Only those ready to enter fully into God's covenant could share together in the communion sacrifice. To participate in the 'communion' is to commit oneself to God and to the people he makes his own.

Through the prophets, God promised his people a 'covenant of peace', writing his law on their hearts. Our Christian faith is that Jesus Christ is the Mediator of this new covenant. At the Last Supper, Jesus echoed the words of Moses: 'This is my blood of the covenant', or 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood which will be poured out for you.' By sharing together the cup of blessing, the cup of eternal salvation, we enter together into this new covenant established by the pouring out of his blood upon the cross. Jesus is the Anointed One, the 'Messiah' or 'Christ', who provides us with the new manna, the bread of life, the sacrificial gift of his own body and blood.

 The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and St Paul understood the Last Supper as Jesus celebrating the Passover with his disciples. John's Gospel preserved the Passover theme by setting the death of Jesus at the moment the Passover lambs were being slain in the Temple. Jesus' death is that of the Passover Lamb, the Suffering Servant of God, led like a lamb to the slaughter. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the one whose life given for us and poured out for us brings healing and peace. By our communion together in the body and blood of Christ, we are drawn deeper into the community of the new covenant, ever more committed to God and to each other in Christ. By taking part in the Eucharist, we are united with the living Christ in his work of reconciliation...

Footnotes in the original. PDF version available here.